How to Overcome Insomnia All by Yourself: A Healthy Sense of Self Guide to Getting a Good Night's Sleep

By Antoinetta Vogels

It’s time for bed. You’re tired, but you know you’ll be tossing and turning for hours to come. At dawn, you fall into a deep sleep, but it’s short lived. Long before you’re ready, your alarm clock mercilessly informs you that it’s time to get up.

After decades of nights like this, Antoinetta Vogels managed to unravel the enigma of her sleeping problem and restore her ability to get a good night’s sleep.

In How to Overcome Insomnia All by Yourself, Antoinetta reveals how to become a healthy sleeper through self-knowledge. Using examples from her own life and firsthand experience with this sleep disorder, Antoinetta explores the childhood circumstances that can lead to unhealthy motivation, approval-seeking behavior, and chronic insomnia in adulthood. She offers practical advice and activities that you can use to heal the wounds of the past so you can enjoy a brighter future full of joy, healthy relationships, and restful sleep.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: May 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9781982244491

Antoinetta Vogels

Antoinetta Vogels, founder and CEO of HEALTHYSENSEOFSELF® is a former member of the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra and mother of two. Suffering from chronic insomnia, Antoinetta recorded her thoughts and emotional processes over a period of 20 years, determined to understand her inner workings. Connecting the dots of her findings led her to become a happy and more productive person, and inspired her to create the Sense of Self Method®. Antoinetta strongly believes that each person has the right to be who he or she is. Living an authentic life leads to good health, happiness, and success. It enhances peace within families and communities—which, in the end, creates a better world.

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Copyright © 2020 Antoinetta Vogels.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-4448-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-4450-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-4449-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020904477

Balboa Press rev. date: 02/22/2022

CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Introduction: How to Cure Your Insomnia with the Sense of Self Method

Chapter 1: Not Sleeping—a Curse or a Blessing?

Chapter 2: What Your Self-Image Can Do to Your Sleep Cycle

Chapter 3: Changing Your Behavior

Sonnet 27 by William Shakespeare

Chapter 4: Sleepless Nights and Your Daily Motivation

Chapter 5: How Parental Mirroring Affects Your Sense of Self

Chapter 6: How Hidden Goals Affect Your Quality of Life

Insomnia by Alicia Ostriker

Chapter 7: Insomnia and Depression

Chapter 8: Self-Confidence, Fear, Anger, and Insomnia

Chapter 9: The Nagging Inner Voice and Your Habit of Listening to It

It’s not your fault!

Chapter 10: No More Insomnia!

Conclusion

Appendix A: Types of Insomnia

Appendix B: Psycho-Emotional Stress Insomnia (PESI)

Appendix C: Substitute Sense of Self Sabotage

Appendix D: The Twelve Sense of Self Reconditioning Statements

Appendix E: Benefits of a Healthy Sense of Self

Notes

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Read More from Antoinetta Vogels

I

dedicate this book to:

All people

who suffer from insomnia.

All those who are unable to replenish their

energy and vitality and therefore find it

impossible to fully flourish in their lives.

All the parents

who do their best to raise their children

while being unable to rest their minds and bodies at night.

All the children

whose parents are too tired and

preoccupied to give their kids

the attention they deserve because they

didn’t get a good night’s sleep.

All the weary travelers on the road

who are a potential danger to themselves and others

because they aren’t as alert in traffic as

they would be if they could sleep.

All the employees

whose decisions or leadership is questioned

because of their chronic fatigue.

All the laborers

who go to work feeling so tired

that they become more prone to accidents.

All the retirees

who find it hard to stay active or take

pleasure in their golden years

because they can’t sleep or they wake up too early.

All my fellow men and women

who struggle to get the sleep they

need and are deeply troubled

by the consequences of their

unwanted nightly wakefulness.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

When I first began looking into the concept of the sense of self, there was no information available, and I had to connect the dots on my own. Thankfully, quite a lot of research has been done since the early nineties, and now there’s a wealth of academic knowledge that confirms my conclusions.

My most notable research discovery was also my most recent one: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, MD. His decades of research in the fields of psychology and neuroscience gave me a fantastic sense of validation in my own personal findings and deeper insight into why those of us with childhood trauma think, feel, behave, and react to things the way we do.¹

Unfortunately, due to the timing of this discovery, I wasn’t able to include references to his work in this book. However, I’m deeply grateful to Dr. van der Kolk for the insight he’s brought to this topic. I hope you’ll take the time to read his work to deepen your knowledge of the inner workings of your own mind and emotions by learning more about how adverse childhood experiences and PTSD affect the brain and how it adapts to trauma.

Knowledge is power, and with all the information that’s so easily available now, you don’t have to be an expert in psychology to understand what’s going on within yourself. Although my voice doesn’t have the label of doctor in front of it, I still managed to find the truth through determination and hard work. You can too. While this book reflects my personal background of not receiving adequate mental and emotional care in childhood, the Sense of Self (SoS) Method can be a valuable resource for anyone suffering from the consequences of a painful childhood.

Not being seen, not being known, and having nowhere to turn to feel safe is devastating at any age, but it is particularly destructive for young children, who are still trying to find their place in the world.

–Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score

INTRODUCTION

How to Cure Your Insomnia

with the Sense of Self Method

There are a lot of books on the topic of insomnia, but people still can’t seem to get a clear understanding of what causes it and how to solve it.

When you seek medical help, doctors usually end up prescribing sleeping pills, but they don’t assist you with getting to the root of the issue. Psychologists do their best to help you understand the problem so you can solve it, but what causes a sleeping problem usually lies hidden in the complex constellation of your personal experiences that are stored in your subconscious mind. Thoroughly researching these issues together with a professional requires a lot of time, money, and endurance, which is simply not an option for most of us. That’s why, in our day and age, it has become increasingly desirable to take matters into our own hands.

If you’re committed to solving the riddle of your insomnia, you’ve found the right book. Get ready to dive into your past and review the childhood conclusions that are still affecting you today. With the SoS Method, as described in the chapters that follow, you will gradually unlock what keeps you awake at night when you should be soundly asleep, recharging your battery with vital energy.

Living with insomnia can be a lonely experience since no one else really understands what you’re going through unless they’ve experienced it firsthand. It’s not just that you can’t sleep; insomnia holds you hostage during the day as well. It impacts your thoughts, emotions, and overall quality of life.

As you probably know by now, there’s no quick or easy fix for insomnia. It takes real effort and determination to get rid of it for good. But if sleeping problems are disrupting your life, you’d better find the courage to take action.

I lived with insomnia for more than twenty-five years and tried every possible option to get rid of it before I finally figured out how to cure myself. Being able to sleep again gave me my life back. Or let me put it differently: because I reclaimed my life, I was able to sleep again. However, I couldn’t stop thinking about all the people who were still living with the agony and isolation of sleepless nights. I felt a strong desire to share my discoveries with other insomniacs and help them recover faster than I did. This is why I created the SoS Method.

I believe that everyone who has a sleeping disorder or who knows someone with insomnia will benefit from reading this book. Working with the SoS Method has a great number of positive side effects. However, this method is especially suitable for solving sleeping problems that are rooted in anxiety that exists on a subconscious level. On the surface, the worries that keep you awake may appear to be about what happened during the day, but you will learn to look at these things from a different angle. A telltale sign that something in your subconscious is responsible for your insomnia is approval-seeking behavior or feeling that your sense of self-worth is tied to living up to certain expectations and conditions.

The ultimate solution lies in being completely yourself. The SoS Method gives you the tools to turn unhealthy patterns of behavior around into self-respecting ones. You will learn to live as your authentic self, which automatically leads to a good night’s sleep.

Take the first step. Look within and heal thy self!

CHAPTER 1

Not Sleeping—a Curse

or a Blessing?

Insomnia can help you find yourself.

I f you’re reading this, you most likely know firsthand what it feels like when you can’t sleep at night. Like me, you’ve spent hours lying awake, wishing you could sleep, and then forcing yourself to function as well as you possibly can the next day. You too must have experienced those feelings of exhaustion and lethargy. The same resulting frustration, loneliness, stress, and hopelessness, as well as that helpless sense of slowly losing control. Perhaps you’ve changed since insomnia became a regular part of your life and you’ve become more sensitive to criticism than you used to be, or you experience the opposite and find yourself feeling emotionally numb.

Insomnia wreaks havoc on your quality of life and it’s bad for your overall health, so it’s no wonder that sleeping aids are a $29 billion market. People need to sleep. You want to get rid of this problem, but you don’t know how. No clear solution has yet been found, and nothing you’ve tried so far has worked.

As an ex-insomniac, I have written this book to share with you how I managed to get rid of my chronic sleeping problems and hand down the tools that helped me heal myself. It’s my deepest wish that you will free yourself from insomnia forevermore.

Let us first agree on how to look at insomnia.

The root cause of insomnia can either be psychological or medical in nature. If there is no medical explanation for your insomnia, understanding the reason you have this problem will allow you to make adjustments to your life and eliminate the issue. I’ve found that the best way to get started with that is to see insomnia as a type of self-sabotage. But note that I don’t use this term with the same negative implications that are commonly attributed to it. What I mean to say here is actually the opposite: What if insomnia is, in fact, serving an important natural purpose for you?

This book addresses sleeping problems that are caused by psychological stress due to a lack of sense of self and the resulting compensation: dependency on approval. In other words, insomnia can happen when you don’t have a strong sense of being your own independent, unique person.

This unfortunate situation usually starts when you’re still a child because adverse childhood experiences and developmental trauma¹,² interfere with the natural development of your sense of self.

When you don’t feel acknowledged as your own unique little person during those early years, an obvious way out is to aim for other people’s approval to experience some sense of satisfaction with yourself, or feeling of worthiness. To get approval, you unknowingly force yourself to